MERIS: 5 Major Banks in Egypt seen Moody’s Upgrade Move

Moody’s is likely to raise its credit rating on five major banks in Egypt following its upgrade on the country’s credit rating, president of Middle East Credit Rating (MERIS) Amr Hassanein said Tuesday.

Middle East Ratings and Investors Service (MERIS) is Moody’s Investors Service partner and affiliate in Egypt.

The five major banks in Egypt expected to get Moody’s credit boost are; National Bank of Egypt (NBE), Banque Misr, Banque Du Caire, Commercial International Bank (CIB-Egypt), AlexBank-Intensa Sanpaolo, Hassanein told Amwal Al Ghad.

This comes after Moody’s released a statement on Tuesday saying it had upgraded its credit rating on Egypt by a notch to B3 from Caa1, citing improved economics, with a stable outlook.

Moody’s expects real GDP growth in Egypt to recover to 4.5% year-on-year for the current fiscal year 2015, which ends in June, and then to rise to around 5%-6% over the coming four years.

In today’s rating action, Moody’s has also raised Egypt’s foreign-currency bond ceiling to B2 from B3, the foreign-currency deposit ceiling to Caa1 from Caa2, and the local-currency country risk ceiling to Ba2 from Ba3. The short-term country ceilings for foreign-currency bonds and deposits remain unchanged at Not-Prime (NP). The Aaa rating assigned to Egypt’s senior unsecured bonds backed by the United States government remains unaffected by today’s rating action.